UK Politics Mega-thread - Page 296

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If you had watched the select committee you would know that it wasn't in the commons, and you might be more informed about what he actually said as opposed to just going with the headline you read in The Guardian. He very competently answered questions on a vast range of topics relating to the technicalities of Brexit. You didn't even get the date right. Also, maybe you didn't notice but the bill went through both houses unamended, just like I told you it would immediately after the court decision.

On March 18 2017 22:14 bardtown wrote:If you had watched the select committee you would know that it wasn't in the commons, and you might be more informed about what he actually said as opposed to just going with the headline you read in The Guardian. He very competently answered questions on a vast range of topics relating to the technicalities of Brexit. You didn't even get the date right. Also, maybe you didn't notice but the bill went through both houses unamended, just like I told you it would immediately after the court decision.

1) I don't know why you point out The Guardian, but I got the information from you.

2) My apologies, I meant the Commons selection committee. I just got back from a holiday, so excuse the jetlag.

3) It's oustanding that the secretary supposedly in charge of Brexit has made no economic assessment or indeed seemingly any assessment other than trotting out the Theresa May line. What exactly have Theresa May's government been doing other than 6 months of silence and fighting the courts over British democratic principles?

I recommend watching the Brexit Select Committee to people who are interested in understanding the process in more detail. Benn and co. vs Davis is the kind of healthy opposition you don't get to see in PMQs. Starts at 9.30 btw. Might also give you an idea why I was so pleased with TM's decision to make DD the Brexit secretary.

Did you not make this post yesterday? Granted, you did post just after midnight, and my head is in a spin about hours currently, but it is still yesterday is it not?

5) I never disputed that it wouldn't go through unamended, but lamented the the lack of guarantees to both EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU, and total lack of real discussion and parliamentary oversight. Actions such as David Davis appearing in the Commons select committee should have occured way beforehand, not after; it is an effect of Theresa May pushing through Article 50 in an undemocratic roughshod style.

I pointed out The Guardian because it was their headline claiming that he had made no assessment of the impact of leaving with no deal. In actuality he made it clear that they were assessing the outcomes and that there was no point in making an economic model because there are far too many unknown factors. Remember, the economic model produced by the government before June 23rd told us we would be in recession for the second half of 2016, and that was a much more straightforward prediction. We actually grew faster than in the first half. Again, if you watch it you can see what they have been doing for the past 9 months. He answers a lot of detailed points about data, customs, immigration, trade deals, etc.

If you lament the lack of guarantees for EU/UK citizens you should look to the EU for refusing a reciprocal agreement which the UK offered at the outset. Even if the EU refused to guarantee those rights for UK citizens I feel like the UK would guarantee them unilaterally, but there are governments in the EU that may use the rights of UK citizens as a bargaining chip against some other demand they have, such as continued free movement. There's a pretty good case for waiting until the agreement can be made bilaterally on that basis. And again, I can't see how parliament voting in favour of a bill created by the government to enact the explicit democratic will of the British people can be considered undemocratic. The UK voted to leave the EU. Leaving the EU is done through A50. Ergo, the UK voted for the government to trigger A50. It makes perfect sense for the commons to back the bill unamended on that basis. And if they didn't, there would be a general election returning a Tory majority of ~100 seats at current estimates, and then they would.

On March 18 2017 06:18 bardtown wrote:Give it time and keep an open mind. As I see it Brexit was the greatest vindication of the democratic process we have seen in recent times. The people voted against the vested interests of the entire establishment to put their country back on the course they want it on. More fundamentally, even, they voted to have the power to decide that course for themselves. When all the economists and political parties were trying to stop the people doing something and they did it anyway, it seems clear to me that there was a fundamental incoherence in our political system that could only be addressed through a referendum.

At the start of the campaign the one thing that made me reluctant to leave was the Ukraine situation. The EU may still have a positive role to play for such countries, and I hope we can support their progress from outside; but the UK is not a fledgling democracy that needs supranational controls to keep it on track. On the contrary, British democracy was made lethargic and unresponsive by the EU. Have a little faith in the decision that people made in the face of all manner of threat.

Also, really, compare this to countries that refuse to give their people a vote and ask where you'd rather be. The refusal of establishment parties in Europe to even consider hearing the people's views on this subject just shows that they know the EU cannot stand up to real democratic pressure. I doubt there are many who would vote to leave, but the EU should be forced to justify its existence to the people. Maybe then it wouldn't be such a catastrophic mess.

How much of this fundamental incoherence still remains (pardon the pun) today in the UK political discourse? If, say, the pro-EU parties still refuse to countenance the idea that Leave had sound reasons for the voting decision, what does that mean for the future of the democratic process? The whole situation to a spectator from across the pond appears to be that the problem with that free votes is that the people choose wrong, and can't be trusted to act in their own best interest, which is a basic questioning of the value of democratic processes in general.

Yeah, it's still there. The government has been forced to align itself with the public on this issue, though, and it seems to me that they are reaping the rewards. Theresa May is far more popular than other party leaders and the Tories are polling over 40% which they couldn't have dreamed of until recently. Also, a lot of the negative rhetoric is dying out. Prior to the referendum Euroscepticism was portrayed as a kind of niche, radical view. That's not sustainable, now, so the conversation has become more level and less accusatory. A lot will depend on the outcome of the actual exit, I think. If everything goes well then the establishment will be forced to concede that the referendum was a success, whereas if it goes badly then I suspect they will do everything they can to stop more referendums being held.

On March 18 2017 06:18 bardtown wrote:Give it time and keep an open mind. As I see it Brexit was the greatest vindication of the democratic process we have seen in recent times. The people voted against the vested interests of the entire establishment to put their country back on the course they want it on. More fundamentally, even, they voted to have the power to decide that course for themselves. When all the economists and political parties were trying to stop the people doing something and they did it anyway, it seems clear to me that there was a fundamental incoherence in our political system that could only be addressed through a referendum.

At the start of the campaign the one thing that made me reluctant to leave was the Ukraine situation. The EU may still have a positive role to play for such countries, and I hope we can support their progress from outside; but the UK is not a fledgling democracy that needs supranational controls to keep it on track. On the contrary, British democracy was made lethargic and unresponsive by the EU. Have a little faith in the decision that people made in the face of all manner of threat.

Also, really, compare this to countries that refuse to give their people a vote and ask where you'd rather be. The refusal of establishment parties in Europe to even consider hearing the people's views on this subject just shows that they know the EU cannot stand up to real democratic pressure. I doubt there are many who would vote to leave, but the EU should be forced to justify its existence to the people. Maybe then it wouldn't be such a catastrophic mess.

How much of this fundamental incoherence still remains (pardon the pun) today in the UK political discourse? If, say, the pro-EU parties still refuse to countenance the idea that Leave had sound reasons for the voting decision, what does that mean for the future of the democratic process? The whole situation to a spectator from across the pond appears to be that the problem with that free votes is that the people choose wrong, and can't be trusted to act in their own best interest, which is a basic questioning of the value of democratic processes in general.

I wouldn't use bardtown as an information source except one of general incoherence. The is no fundamental incoherence, except one which naturally occurs when the populationa are split nearly 50/50. He only knows how to speak in soundbites. 52% against 48% is somehow "the people". He happily talks about "taking back control", but is angry when British democracy is at work confirming that yes, a bill must be subject to a discussion and a vote through parliament. He is against the existance of the House of Lords when it provides negatives to Brexit and for it's existance when it places forth positives. He is pleased David Davis's appearance in the commons yesterday even though what was made apparent was how our brexit secretary made no assessment of leaving the EU, in which one has to wonder what exactly has May's government been doing over the last 6 months! He has some strange narrative against "the establishment" whatever that may be. The referendum occured as a result of David Cameron trying to focus the effort of the conservative party away from obsessing over the EU and miscalculated. Its not a matter of people choosing "wrong" but that in effect the current government of May, who is unelected, are pushing through a bill without proper democratic oversight or indeed any form of real analysis.

He offered me something well-reasoned, which I was hoping for, and not soundbites. I can't judge for things in the past, just on his fundamental point. The polling at outset and how inevitable the Leave vote was viewed to fail, and I refer to a bevy of articles in advance of the vote here, really underlies a disconnect between the populace and the "correct view" of London and metros. So I accept something of a mismatch that thankfully is headed towards a resolution when both sides approach the table again (aka how much are we willing to pay EU and for what in a trade deal, how much home sovereignty must we pledger in order to bring half of Britain back to the fold).

I'm not inclined to check the truth of House of Lords reverses, or David Davis, or analyzing history of narratives: I don't follow this thread minutely enough. If you want to offer your genuine perspective given there exists some measure of incongruity between leadership and the voting public, bardtown proposes a fundamental one, I'm all ears.

Great armies come from happy zealots, and happy zealots come from California!

The number of EU nationals registering as nurses in England has dropped by 92% since the Brexit referendum in June, and a record number are quitting the NHS, it can be revealed.

Nursing degree applications slump after NHS bursaries abolished Read moreThe shock figures have prompted warnings that Theresa May’s failure to offer assurances to foreigners living in the UK is exacerbating a staffing crisis in the health service.

Only 96 nurses joined the NHS from other European nations in December 2016 – a drop from 1,304 in July, the month after the referendum.

It's all Germany's fault. The EU is Germany's toy. Am I doing this correctly? I'm starting to think Leavers hate the EU because the driving force is Germany and France not the UK. Could that be the real reason hidden behind "EU is not democratic" and the other stuff?

On March 19 2017 22:26 Zaros wrote:Is this the UK politics thread or the im upset about the UK so lets insult it thread?

Sorry, I didn't realise that we live in totalitarian country where we cannot criticise the people or the policies of a government that affect us.

I live in UK. I am proud to be British, and even though I recognise that this is merely an accident of birth, I feel familiarity and warmth in our customs and culture and language and have preference towards our spread and preservation of said culture. It's also a British custom to mock the shit out of people we disagree with and not to follow whatever the government tells us to do.

Prime Minister Theresa May will file divorce papers to leave the European Union on March 29, launching two years of complex negotiations that will pit the U.K.’s need for a trade deal against the bloc’s view that Britain shouldn’t benefit from Brexit.

More than 40 years after the U.K. joined the EU and nine months since it voted to quit it, Britain’s envoy to the bloc, Tim Barrow, informed EU President Donald Tusk on Monday of her plan to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the mechanism for quitting that has never been used.

At stake in the looming talks is whether Britain -- the world’s sixth biggest economy -- can regain powers over immigration and lawmaking without derailing trade with its largest market or threatening London’s status as the region’s leading financial center. England’s 310-year-old union with Scotland is also in jeopardy, while the border separating Northern Ireland -- a U.K. province -- from the Republic of Ireland could become a hard one.

“We are on the threshold of the most important negotiation for this country for a generation,” Brexit Secretary David Davis said in a statement after the date was announced by May’s spokesman, James Slack. “The government is clear in its aims: a deal that works for every nation and region of the U.K. and indeed for all of Europe –- a new, positive partnership between the U.K. and our friends and allies in the European Union.”

Prime Minister Theresa May will file divorce papers to leave the European Union on March 29, launching two years of complex negotiations that will pit the U.K.’s need for a trade deal against the bloc’s view that Britain shouldn’t benefit from Brexit.

More than 40 years after the U.K. joined the EU and nine months since it voted to quit it, Britain’s envoy to the bloc, Tim Barrow, informed EU President Donald Tusk on Monday of her plan to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the mechanism for quitting that has never been used.

At stake in the looming talks is whether Britain -- the world’s sixth biggest economy -- can regain powers over immigration and lawmaking without derailing trade with its largest market or threatening London’s status as the region’s leading financial center. England’s 310-year-old union with Scotland is also in jeopardy, while the border separating Northern Ireland -- a U.K. province -- from the Republic of Ireland could become a hard one.

“We are on the threshold of the most important negotiation for this country for a generation,” Brexit Secretary David Davis said in a statement after the date was announced by May’s spokesman, James Slack. “The government is clear in its aims: a deal that works for every nation and region of the U.K. and indeed for all of Europe –- a new, positive partnership between the U.K. and our friends and allies in the European Union.”

Again, when May put David Davis at the helm it was clear that we would leave the single market. He's always been opposed to the EU on the grounds of sovereignty/democracy. He was friends with Tony Benn, etc. So called 'soft Brexit' was never a real possibility.

On March 21 2017 10:01 Shield wrote:So if leavers are such democrats, why don't they propose a Brexit referendum? Soft Brexit and hard Brexit. People will choose. Or are you afraid of democracy in this case?

It was made perfectly clear that leaving the EU meant regaining control of borders, trade and legislation. That can only happen outside the single market. Notice how only Remain voters talk about soft Brexit. It's just an excuse to try and stop the result of the referendum being carried out. Even if there was a referendum it would come back in favour of leaving the single market, but the government that called for the referendum would completely lose the confidence of leave voters who are in no small part responsible for their 19 point lead in the opinion polls.